Re: new Klingon spelling

At 22:23 2.1.2004, Robert Jung wrote:
>I hope this will make Klingon less ugly!
>
>Every letter except these are the same:
>
>[From "The Sounds of Klingon" http://www.kli.org/tlh/soundshtml ]
>
>dh=D:
>x=H
>I=i *
>qh=Q
>sh=S
>tlh=tl
>'/?/`/7='
>
>* Then what does <i> represent?
>
>--Robert
Beware!  Every beginner in Klingon begins by meddling
with the romanization! :)

Actually it is quite unnecessary to put any _h_ after
_d_ or _s_, since there's nothing they can be confused with.

My favorite capsinsensitivization is thus:

ch > c
D > d
H > k
I > i
Q > qh
S > s
' > x

The last is in order to really bring home that the
glottal stop is a consonant like any other.

If you like you could of course sprinkle _h_s more
liberally (ch, dh, kh, ih, sh, xh) but I prefer to
keep them only where they are really necessary in
order to distinguish sounds.

As a matter of fact I'm unfond of digraphs for single
sounds in general and random h-digraphs in particular;
that's why my lang Sohlob uses _tj, sj, (zj)_ (and _dj_)
rather than the more 'English' _ch, sh, (zh, j).  There
is a non-ASCII version of Sohlob romanization which uses
_c, c-cedilla, j_ instead of _tj, sj, dj/zj_, but I don't
use that in email, nor in my vocabulary database, nor indeed
in most that I write in or about Sohlob, since I tend to confuse
my own handwritten c-cedillas with _s_ or _g_, and because
I keep confusing Sohlob *nj* and *ny* the _ndj_ is much
clearer.  Note that _dj/zj_ denote different allophones of the
same phoneme; I use _zj_ only in the combination _zjd_,
since I think _djd_ for [z\d] looks too ugly.

Now _h_ to indicate aspiration or voicelessness is
another thing; hence _hl, hng, hn, hm_ for voiceless
lateral and nasal in the romanization of Sohlob, and
the use of the letters for voiced stops + the letter
for /h/ to indicate voiceless aspirates in the
'native' Sohlob script.


/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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